How does the justice system protect you from the mentally ill and violent ///Is 60 days in jail enough? Will giving this woman a home change her behavior?
Victim Anna Martinez (left) is taken away in a stretcher while cops arrest the woman (right) who allegedly slashed her at Grand Central Terminal.G.N.Miller
A homeless woman savagely attacked a mother riding the subway with her baby Sunday morning — flying into a rage because the worried victim didn’t want to sit next to her, authorities said.
The mom, Anna Martinez, 31, was slashed in the face, suffering nerve damage and requiring 30 stitches, on a No. 5 train in Grand Central station around 11 a.m., police said.
Modal TriggerThe victim’s parents and 1-year-old baby at Grand CentralG.N.Miller
Martinez had boarded the southbound train with her 1-year-old daughter at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem minutes earlier — as did her alleged attacker, cops said.
The homeless woman sat down next to the mom, but when she began acting erratically, Martinez got up and moved to another seat, seeking to protect her daughter, who was in a stroller, police said.
“She didn’t want to sit next to a homeless person,” the source said of Martinez.
The homeless woman, whom police have not identified, flew into a rage over the snub, getting up and slicing Martinez on the left side of her face with an unknown object, a police source said.
Blood soaked through a massive head bandage and streamed down Martinez’s face as she was loaded into an ambulance bound for Bellevue Hospital.
Martinez’s mom, Anna Flores, broke down in tears describing what the attacker did to her daughter and how lucky it was that nothing happened to her little granddaughter.
“My daughter [was] slashed in the face, and she had her baby with her,” sobbed Flores, who showed up at the scene with her husband to pick up the child while Martinez was taken to the hospital. “I don’t believe this.”
Police said they were on the scene “almost immediately,’’ but the suspect was still able to flee the train when it pulled into Grand Central.
She ran wildly through the commuter hub and then onto the street above and escaped, according to sources.
Police quickly broadcast her description citywide — including the fact that the attacker was wearing a faded red short-sleeve shirt with the number 10 on it — and she was soon arrested at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, sources said.
The woman was still acting erratically when officers nabbed her, sources said.
Police did not find a weapon on her.
The suspect has been arrested more than 60 times, mostly for drugs but also for prostitution and trespassing, police said.
She goes by several aliases, a police source said.
Straphangers said the attack is proof that more needs to be done to combat subway crime, especially incidents involving the mentally ill.
“I hate to call [Martinez] a martyr, but [her attack is] exactly what has to happen before we can ever do something about a problem,” said Michelle Ahrens, 37, of the Bronx. “[The] reactive approach gets a woman stabbed.”
Bronx straphanger Elaina Cruz, 49, said, “This makes me not want to ride the subway anymore.
“I’m, like, the most paranoid person, especially at night — this is exactly why.”
Last month, a Brooklyn woman had to get 40 stitches after a maniac sliced her from cheek to lip on an A train.
In that case, the accused attacker was a homeless man who had four prior arrests and lived at the Atlantic House Men’s Shelter in Brownsville, which houses single men who “are dually diagnosed with mental illness and substance abuse,” according to operator CAMBA.
Earlier in April, in what police said appeared to be a random attack, a man struck a female rider in the face in Brooklyn’s Borough Hall station before fleeing the train.
And just last week, a man crept up behind a 63-year-old woman on a No. 1 train at South Ferry Station, wrapped a rag over her face and tried to rape her, according to police.
Last year, subway crime was so bad that the Guardian Angels began patrolling trains again for the first time in 20 years. And this year started out even worse than 2016.
There were 112 felony assaults reported in the system from Jan. 1 through the end of April, versus 95 for the same period last year — a 17 percent increase, according to the most recent report from the MTA.
Meanwhile, arrests are down 27 percent over the same period, from 14,230 to 10,358, the report shows.
The uptick in subway crime began in 2014 and the rate has risen since, records show.
Additional reporting by Gina Daidone, Reuven Fenton and Larry Celona
A Brooklyn man who confronted some rowdy panhandling performers was attacked with his own hula hoop Sunday after standing up to defend an older couple who had declined to donate to the dancers, he told The Post.
A bandaged Jean-Loup Wolfman said he had just given his unidentified assailants a dollar when one of the men turned on a “tiny” elderly couple as the train pulled into 14th Street-Union Square station.
“There was a tiny Jewish couple there and the one guy starts screaming at them ‘I will knock that beanie off your head!'” the frazzled 48-year-old said as he was escorted away from the Transit District 4 Station by paramedics.
“I stepped in and I was like ‘back up’ and the guy just turned on me and said, ‘I will f–k you up! I will f–k you up!” the Fort Greene resident and fellow street performer explained.
“I tipped him a dollar,” he continued. “When they wanted to fight me I got out my hula hoop and I asked them to have a dance off.”
“He took my hula hoop, and he hits me with it and I started screaming,” Wolfman said, gesturing at his wrapped head, which still sported a visible gash.
The fight somehow made its way onto the platform, where Wolfman continued screaming for police.
“He took my guitar and threw it down the stairs,” the performer lamented. “The one guy left and the second guy was like ‘you better stop screaming or I will f–k you up!'”
His assailants remained at large Sunday evening, authorities said.
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